ROSS BLECKNER I U APRIL 1988 THROUGH 12 JUNE 1988 SAN FRANCISCO MUSEUM OF MODERN ART A SERIES OF RECENT WORK BY YOUNGER AND ESTABLISHED ARTISTS ROSS BLECKNER ':4 painter is a person who makes meaning by making feeling."1 -Ross Bleckner For the last several years. a tremendous amount of new painting has been received with critical and popular enthusiasm Ye:. only a decade ago the view that "painting 1s dead" was confidently ex· pressed by the vanguard artists and cr·tics associated with min mal and conceptual art. the key American artisticdirections of tre 1970s. In retrospect. however this sweeping judgement is not difficult to understand neither of the painting styles current in the seventies­ the enervated efforts of color-field artists and the conservative contributions of the "new realists" -seemed to represent pro­ gressive tendencies. At the same time. the American art world 1n general had remained almost blissfully ignorant of the astonis 11ng achievements of a revitalized European art community in which artists like Joseph Beuys had succeeded in making an art powerful enough in its forms and its concepts to express and to criticize the cond1t1on of contemporary culture. Out of this state of art world affairs in the late 1970s emerged a new generation of young artists in NewYork who hungered to do what was not then being done in America to make paintings that conveyed and communicated authentic cultural content Sur­ veying the recent American art around them. they recognized the important accomplishments of minimalist and conceptual artists. However. they were also aware that minimalism-much of the best of which was sculpture-was an art of aggressive muteness. while the eloquent texts frequently incorporated into conceptual art were not consistently supported by a commensurate level of visual interest. They saw little contemporarypainting they could respect: that which they could-the post· minimal work of artists such as Robert Ryman and Brice Marden-did not seem to match their particular aspirations. In 1979 an essay written by the young painter Ross Bleckner entitled 'Transcendent Ant1-Fet1sh1sm" was published in Artforum.2 On behalf of this new generation of artists, Bleckner articulated a longing for an art reinvested with meanings rooted in the larger psychological. social, and politKal reality (This articlewas 1llJstrated with the work of Bleckner's friends Eric Fischl David Salle, '1att Mullican. Barbara Kruger. and Julian Schnabel, plus several more senior artists including Richard Artschwager and Vito Acconc1.) Valuing the unmed1ated directness of painting and seeking to initiate a rupture with the conventions established by the preceding gen­ eration of American abstract painters. Bleckner set out to express in his art what he has referred to as "libidinal forces and Oows" through the symbolic form of the visual image Bleckner's art is undeniably romantic It is also deeply informed by a conceptual foundation that gives 1t the critical. que;t1onmg stance which elevates painting beyond formal concerns and sen­ suous appeal. While Bleckners workhas always had this conceptual basis-as in the work of Cy Twombly, a painter of an elder genera t1on who has been a source of inspiration for Bleckner-he has recently reached a level of artistic maturity where the provocative ideas contained in his earlier work are Joined with an extraordinary command of a painterly. formal vocabulary. The result 1s a highly charged art. at once full of ideas and at the same time unabashedly beautiful. Like a number of the most interesting painters of our day who are in reaction to artists' traditional obsession with inventing a unique or "signature " style, Bleckner works in several quite distinct manners and refuses to classify his paintings as either abstract or representational. In this exh1bit1on his range is represented by three directions he is currently pursuing. "stripe paintings:· "dot paintings:· and "emblem paintings:· The stripe pa1nt1ngs-the most abstract. conceptual. and con­ frontational-have their origins in Op Art. a discredited chapter 1n recent modernist art. But they are not about 1960s formalist manipulation of optical phenomena; rather: more in the manner of the Abstract Expressionist ClyffordStill-an artistBleckner studies and admires-they are concerned with the emotional psychology orthings taking form in the consciousness. shimmering as they seek to come into focus, and evaporating like ice becoming steam In pa1nt1ngs such as Unknown Quantities ofLight. Part /Vwe see an art of light. atmosphere. and temperature whose soft-edged stripes have been exquisitely described by the painter Pat Steir as "fibril­ lating:· Here, a complex meditation on light-the ingredient that. for Bleckner. is painting's essential element-becomes the illus­ trated subject in a work otherwise absent of representational for ms. creating what Schnabel has described in Bleckner's work as "the sensation of the atmosphere as an emblem of an emotional state" 3 Perhaps more than any other artist to appear since James Turrell and Robert Irwin. Bleckner has made light his expressive medium, employed to convey his ideas about loss. sadness. a nd hope. The dot painting Knights Not Nights may serve as a paradigm of Bleckner's poetic concerns with the expression of melancholy and with redemption. In it. dots of white impasto emerge from a background darkness made even richer and deeper by a varnished surface to create the effect of brilliant beams of starlight coming into view after having raced through the cosmic depths of the night sky As these points of luminosity appearout of a fictive depth. some are caught and held by graceful hands (inspired by the elegantly attenuated hands seen in the religious paintings of El Greco) while others slip through the grasp and continue their fall through space. Knights Not Nights is a painting lamenting the death of those lost souls represented by the uncaught beams oflight while. at the same time. 1t 1s a celebration of the enduring hope that lives can be saved. This 1s elegiac painting. it deals with the ideas of death and survival. of the sublime. the ineffable. the unanswerable. Respond­ ing to the issues 1t raises. a complex combination of emotions are evoked. including despair, terror. awe. and joy The issue of epi­ demic. especially the current health emergency. has affected the artist deeply; a numberofhis paintings. including Remember Them. have been memorials to v1ct1ms of AIDS. The younger painter Peter Halley has written .:boutBleckner's response to a modern era touched so deeply by the tragedy ofholocaust. nuclear warfare. and epidemic. observing. "His work represents a mood of questioning in the wake of this troubled history. and a realization that knowl­ edge may be doubt and that doubt may be light-that the reality of disillusionment may also offer the possibility of transcendence "4 Bleckner considers western culture to be in ensis. In part. he sees this as the ensis that comes at the end of a millennium, reveal­ ing a sensibility acutely aware of death. Emblem paintings like Memoriam. containing such fu nereal imagery as urns. chalices. and nowers. renect the innuence of fin-de-siecle nineteenth-century Symbolist art and its decadent but richly elegant poetimat1on of death. Another aspect 1s more specifically related to the end of a century in which Amencan civilization was originally perceived as nurturing and positive. but has recently metamorphosed into an entity altogether meaner and more cynical. Bleckner fee ls that our once 1deal1st1c and benevolent notion of democracy has mutated. becoming a front behind which "to do things:· It 1s Bleckner's sense that today people are looking for some­ thing in which they can have faith. He believes that art can be a healing and redemptive force that it can fu nction as an agent of change. providing leadership by posing fu ndamental questions. He does not himself believe in any conventional notions of religion. yet he feels the need to challenge his own d1sbel1ef in spirituality. acknowledging that things have an "inner glow" His art. expressing simultaneously "a sense of wonderment and a sense of disbelief:' universalizes a conditior that seems very much of our moment. John R. Lane Director 1 Unless otherwise noted. all quotations ofthe artist were made in conversation with the author on 15 January and 19 February. 1988 2 Ross Bleckner. "Transcendeit Ant1-Fet1sh1sm:· Arrforum. vol 17. no 7 (March 1979}. pp. 50-55 3 Julian Schnabel.CV I (New York Random House. 1987}. p 181 4 Peter Halley. "Ross Bleckner Pa1nt1ng at the End of History:· Arts Magazine. vol 56, no 9 (May 1982}, p 133 ROSS BLECKNER born 1n New York City. 1949 Loves and works1n New York City EDUCATION New York Ln1vers1ty. B A, 1971 California Institute of the Arts. Valencia. M FA 1973 SELECTED INDIVIDUAL EXHIBITIONS 1975 Cunningham Ward Gallery. New York 1976 john Doyie Gallery. Chicago 1977 Cunningham Ward Gallery. New York 1979 Mary Boone Gallery New York 1980 Mary Boone Ga.lery. New York 1981 Mary Boone Gallery. New York 1982 Patrick Verehst Galene, Antwerp. Belgium Portico Row Gallery. Philadelphia 1983 Mary Boone Gallery. New York 1984 Nature M orte Gallery. New York 1985 Boston Museum School 1986 Mano D1acono Gallery, Boston Mary Boone Gallery. New York 1987 Mary Boone Gallery. New York Margo Leavin Gallery. Los Angeles SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 1975 Biennial. Whitney Museum ofAmerican Art. New York 1979 New Pomtmg, New York. Hayward Gallery. London Four Artists. Hallwalls. Buffalo. New York 1981 Tenth AnniversaryExhibition. California Institute of the Arts . Valencia 1983 Mory Boone and Her Artists. Se1bu Gallery. Tokyo 1986 End Gome Reference and Simulation m Recent American Pointmg and Sculpture. Inst itute of Contemporary Art. Boston 1987 Biennial. Whitney Museum of American Art. New York Awards in the Visual Arts 6, Grey Art Gallery.